Over the past year the Edison Environmental Science Academy has developed an inquiry-based environmental economics curriculum to enhance and integrate our current science and social studies programs. Mr. Brinkman’s third grade class is participating in an activity that has the students developing an understanding of how the concepts of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle affect the environment and businesses. In the video students are looking at the different types of litter and how they could reuse the materials (ex: placing the glove in the lost and found), recycle (ex. putting the hamburger into the compost pile), so that the litter on the playground can be reduced. This was part of our overall project aimed reducing the waste that the school produces to save money. At the end of this project students developed a plan to recycle all of the milk cartons and Juice cups produced at lunch.

Their plan reduced the number of trash collections per week from 5 to 3 saving the school over $120/month.